Before and After
by Aislinn Carter
Summary: The musings of Miral Paris, both before and after Admiral Janeway goes back in time. Post Endgame, PT, eventual JC.


I don't own any version of Star Trek, or any of these characters except the ones I made up. I wish I did, I like money, but I don't.

This is just a little something I wrote to occupy my mind while I'm sick...I really wasn't feeling well when I wrote it, so there might be some errors and it really isn't my best (in my opinion) but indulge me.

* * *

Miral Paris watched forlornly as the stars streaked past her shuttle. She couldn't believe Admiral Janeway had dismissed her like that, and after Miral had worked for _months_ on this project. At first, she had been fuming, but now she was just hurt. She thought the admiral placed more trust in her than that. 

A part of her was also unsure about leaving Admiral Janeway alone there. If anything happened, who would help her? Miral hadn't any choice but to leave. Once she beamed back to her shuttle, she had been ordered by a very temperamental Klingon security guard to vacate orbit or face the consequences. Evidently, the ridges on her forehead weren't going to matter in this case.

There was another part screaming out at her, a part of herself she had managed to stomp down ever since Admiral Janeway drafted her for this mission. She wasn't stupid. Even though she hadn't been told specifically what the admiral needed it for, Miral had a pretty good idea. After all, why would you need something to open up a temporal rift unless you were going back in time?

Like any good Starfleet officer, Miral had asked few questions and followed her orders to the letter. But now that the temporal deflector would be in the admiral's hands, she was apprehensive. Where – or rather _when_ – was she planning on going? Was it before Miral was born? Before she was conceived? Before her parents even got married?

Miral took a few slow even breaths, willing herself not to panic. A good Starfleet officer knew they may be required to lay their life on the line for the good of the Federation. Well, she wasn't sure how the Federation would be impacted, but she was certainly willing to lay her life down for the good of her family. And the crew of Voyager had always been her family. And the family had come home to a Federation that they no longer knew or fit into.

Twenty-three years struggling to get home had made strangers out of those they left behind. Miral didn't really know the feeling – after all, she had never known a family other than the Voyager crew – but she knew that her parents had felt the pain of returning home to a world they no longer knew and the ghosts of family they would never know again. They had gotten home in time to spend barely a heartbeat with Grandpa Owen, who died mere weeks after their return. Grandma said he hung on, determined to see his son and hold him once again before he went, and Miral had always admired her grandfather's strength in that, because he had been very ill at the end. Grandma followed not long after, and Grandmother Miral and Grandfather John had been gone long before they made it back. Her aunts – her father's two older sisters – were, ten years later, still virtual strangers, and her handful of cousins were scattered with their own families. The only relative they kept in touch with, oddly enough, was her mother's cousin Elizabeth and her family. They hadn't spoken since before B'Elanna's father left, but once Elizabeth's uncle John told her that communication was possible with Voyager, she had sought out a relationship with her cousin. The two women had been in constant communication since before Miral was born, and she was there with her husband and children to greet them when they walked down Voyager's gangplank and set foot onto the grounds of Starfleet Academy, welcomed by hundreds of thousands of people, screaming and crying with joy.

Miral would never forget the crush that had welcomed them. She had been on the bridge when they made their final approach over San Francisco, after being debriefed and quarantined at Deep Space Four, the tiniest outpost Starfleet had. They hadn't been permitted to leave the ship for an entire week, before HQ finally welcomed them home and escorted them with an honor guard back to Earth.

Her mother had, for the first time in months, been at her bridge engineering station. Her father, for the first time since his promotion to first officer, was back at the helm, and whenever he turned to look at them, Miral could see his eyes sparkling like Jenny Rollins' eight year old son whenever he had the opportunity to cause some damage on this ship. Her father's place, no matter how many promotions he earned, would forever be at the helm of a ship.

Miral had been permitted on the bridge due to the fact that she had recently begun her Starfleet training, and her rotation lately had been in Astrometrics, with Ensign Wildman (Naomi, not Samantha). Since Naomi would have to be at her bridge station, she had brought her "assistant" to assist her, not that there was much work for either of them.

Lieutenant Commander Kim was in Tom's customary spot, but judging from the forlorn looks Captain Janeway was giving the chair out of the corner of her eye (Miral could see from her position above the command chairs), Harry wasn't the one she wanted there next to her at this moment. But the man who belonged there, the man who would always belong there as far as the captain was concerned, was gone forever, drifting away from them all just after they entered Federation space.

Miral knew that everyone said he had never gotten over his wife's death, a woman she herself had no recollection of, but Miral had never been able to believe that. She rather thought it was the way he and Captain Janeway had drifted apart over the years. Sources claimed they had been best friends once upon a time, but that their close friendship had started to crumble with the arrival of Seven of Nine, and not because Commander Chakotay's future wife was coming between them romantically. On the contrary. He had hated the fact that the Borg drone was on Voyager, and hadn't really bothered to hide his disdain for the entire situation.

Ironic, really.

While Miral didn't remember them being best friends, and while she didn't remember Seven of Nine or the awkwardness that sprouted up between the captain and the unusual couple after they began dating, she did remember that after Seven of Nine's death, Captain Janeway had always been there for Commander Chakotay. Their friendship wasn't the one people spoke of them having in the early years, but it was a deep companionship, a mutual symbiosis. Chakotay had needed Captain Janeway after Seven's death. He had needed her friendship, and truthfully, they had both lost someone they loved: Chakotay had lost his wife, and Captain Janeway had lost her daughter.

But while Miral had clear memories of them being close after Seven's death, she also had clear memories of the wedge that had sprung up between them over the years. When her parents didn't think she was in earshot, she would hear them discussing the captain and commander's fracturing friendship. According to senior staff gossip, it hadn't been long after Seven's death that the spark that had been between the two years ago had flared again. Long nights of comforting each other had slowly turned into something more, and the same little smirks they had once given each other over the middle console all those years ago had started flying again. And so had the gossip.

Miral had never found out for sure what had stopped it. Some said they were both too guilt ridden too push forward, others said that Captain Janeway had never been able to completely forgive him for his betrayal. Whatever the reason, the smirks soon faded and there was instead companionable silence. They had never been able to recapture what they had once almost had, but they had been devoted to each other until the end, in their own way. No one but the Doctor knew what words had been said on Chakotay's death bed, but some had heard the anguished sobs coming from her quarters after he was gone, and more than one night had seen Miral's mother being summoned to the captain's side.

Miral knew that the years had been hardest on Captain Janeway. Most of the crew had moved on from their old lives in the Federation and had made new lives on Voyager, but Captain Janeway never really had. Her oldest friend had been confined to quarters for ten years, since his neurological disease had become too out of control for him to perform his duties. Her best friend had – according to Tom – given up on who he really wanted and lost his heart to absolutely the worst choice of a woman he could make, but had never really stopped wanting his original choice. But he burned that bridge, her mother said. Miral heard her mother say once that it was a good thing Chakotay and Seven had gotten married on shore leave, because no one thought Captain Janeway could have actually gotten through the ceremony. Despite her aloof attitude over the years, no one was stupid.

So now, as they were pulling towards Earth, she could see the wistful looks Captain Janeway gave that second chair. And her heart went out to her.

There had been fireworks as they flew over and under the Golden Gate Bridge. It had been nighttime, and they could see the lights of the city were lit up in welcome for them. They landed, powered down the engines, and Captain Janeway began the final evacuation of Voyager.

The bridge crew was the last to leave the ship. Captain Janeway led them onto the grounds, the crowd shouting and cheering as families and friends greeted one another after twenty-three long years. Miral's mother was swept into the arms of her cousin, and she could see that Captain Janeway was embracing a slightly shorter woman with the same gray hair and a similar face. Miral supposed it was the younger sister the captain occasionally mentioned: she knew the mother had died ages ago.

All around her people they didn't even know and never would know were going ballistic over the return of the legendary Voyager crew. Later on, Miral would learn that the crew in fact knew very few people who were in the massive crowd that night. The sad fact was that whatever families they had left were virtual strangers, whatever friends they had left moved on, and yet the entire world rejoiced when they returned. It was a bittersweet night, and afterward, the crew was forever unsure how they felt about it. Some said, seemingly joking, that maybe they should have just kept traveling on Voyager forever. For truly, the world they returned to was a foreign one.

* * *

Miral nervously tapped the side of the console, her reflexes ready if Admiral Janeway should be in need of assistance. As she waited, she thought about what it would be like when the past was changed. Would she know? Would she feel anything? Would she remember this timeline? 

Would she even be in a timeline?

Memories of her life swirled in her mind. Miral had never felt that she was lacking anything by growing up on Voyager. It was the only life she had known, and it had been a good life. When she was a little girl, her father would sometimes bring her to the bridge and let her sit on his lap while he piloted the ship, only when they were in quiet space, of course. She and Nicky Tefler, who had been born just a year after she had, would run around the ship and cause as much havoc as possible, knowing that the crew had a soft spot for the children of Voyager, especially Captain Janeway. B'Elanna had often told her daughter that the captain felt guilty that these children were growing up so far away from where they should. Miral _loved_ growing up on a starship, but she wasn't above using her knowledge of the captain's guilt and indulgence to get away with certain things…like overloading the holodeck or making a mess in the science labs during an ill conceived "experiment". Like Naomi before them, Miral and the children born after her knew they could almost get away with murder.

Miral's parents hadn't had more children. If they had gotten home earlier, maybe, but Tom and B'Elanna made the conscious decision to remain a one child family. When she had asked her mother about it, B'Elanna had sighed. "Sometimes, it's hard for us to find all the resources we need. In the Federation, there is no such thing as replicator rations and very few ships have or need hydroponics bays. We need to be careful. We're no so far, I think, from the Alpha Quadrant that we need another generation to crew the ship, but we're not so close that we can afford to overrun it with children. I think a lot of people feel that way, and that's why so few of us have children. We've been out here twenty years," which was true, at the time, "and there are only fifteen children out of over a hundred and forty people. And for the first seven years there was only one, and she was conceived in the Alpha Quadrant. You broke the dry spell, Miral," her mother grinned. "But we were content with you. Daddy and I didn't need anymore kids. We felt blessed with you."

So she had been…somewhat spoiled, especially by her parents and her uncle Harry. When she was a kid, the two men would take her to the holodeck to play Captain Proton, and her mother would patiently (which her father would say was a miracle for her mother) go over the finer points of engineering with her daughter. Tom had tried to breed her to be a pilot, and B'Elanna had tried to breed her to be an engineer, but in the end, their daughter had discovered a passion for the stars.

She had been pulled from her post as an astrometrics officer aboard the massive USS Washington to do Admiral Janeway's bidding, and she had never once asked or expected clarification from the woman about the end results. Now, her stomach rolled in panic and she could taste bile at the thought of the last God knew how many years being erased.

Finally, she could take it no more. She accessed her console and typed a simple text message to the admiral: Please Don't Erase Me. She sat back, waiting for a response, but didn't get one immediately.

It wasn't until she entered Sector 001 some hours later that she received an equally simple reply: It Will Be After You.

Miral let out a huge breath as thankful tears came to her eyes. She had loved growing up on Voyager. It had been her playground, her schoolroom, and her first office. She had been sweet sixteen when she returned home, still young enough to adapt and yet too old to ever be anything but a Voyager. Her parents had left Starfleet, but she hadn't, and the Voyager in her would forever make an explorer out of her.

And she would hate to have that childhood erased.

But she could live with it as long as _she_ wasn't erased.

As she entered Earth's orbit, she thought back on the last ten years. Her parents were content, she supposed, and successful in their fields, but they had both always been guilt ridden over the years lost with their parents, and she knew their daughter's wanderlust spirit unsettled them. Their best friend commanded his own ship now, and much of their "family" was broken and scattered. So as content as they were, she knew that getting home earlier would have made life easier for them, and everyone else.

Miral stared at the approaching blue and green planet, her home for the last ten years, but not where her heart was. Her heart lay, as many of their hearts did, in a grounded spaceship in San Francisco, where future generations would see the way they lived but never know the whole story, not really. No one who hadn't been there could ever really know.

Maybe…maybe it would be better, she thought. Maybe so many things would be better, and life might not seem so…so gray.

And that was the last thought she had.

* * *

Miral smiled as Earth came into view. _Home sweet home,_ she thought happily. 

Her mission had lasted six months, rather a long time to be away for some, but after listening to her parents' stories, she knew it was a day picnic to people like them. Still, she was glad to be back. She hadn't spent seven years on a starship: six months was more than enough for her.

"This is Ensign Paris, requesting landing clearance at Oakland Shipyards. Transmitting identification codes now."

_"Roger, Ensign Paris. Codes received and accepted. Clearance granted. Lock onto the beacon signal being transmitted."_

"Acknowledged. Locking on."

Miral set the auto pilot to follow the beacon signal to Oakland and sat back to watch her approach. She sighed as she flew over the Pacific. So many happy memories accompanied that sight. She would never forget the week they spent at the beach in Malibu with the Janeways. It had been a week of complete indulgence, where the mothers did absolutely nothing but sit in lounge chairs by the surf and the fathers did absolutely nothing but horseplay with their kids. They had been joined a few days later by the Riker's, and B'Elanna, Kathryn and Deanna had laid in the sun armed with nothing but chocolate ice cream and iced coffee.

She remembered her father and Uncle Chakotay tossing them in the waves and helping them to boogie board and surf. Their tans had deepened, her father's hair had turned white and Aunt Kathryn's had turned strawberry blonde, and Captain Riker, whom the Paris' didn't know very well but who was very good friends with the Janeways, had helped Miral's little sister Julia build a monstrous sandcastle. At the end of the week, Nana and Pop-Pop Paris had come to have dinner with all of them. Once the talk had turned to boring Starfleet nonsense, Miral and Taya had taken the younger kids to play in the backyard of the house they were renting. But on her way back in to grab some water, she heard her name and stopped by the living room doorway to listen.

"Harry always said she's have a great life on Voyager, but I have to say, I'm relieved we were able to raise her here." B'Elanna was saying.

"Do you think you still would have had the other kids, if you hadn't made it back when you did?" Nana asked.

There was a moment of silence. "No," Tom said softly. "Life was too uncertain out there. All throughout B'Elanna's pregnancy, I would have nightmares about our baby being taken by Viddians for organs or sold into slavery to some alien world or just being killed while Voyager was under attack. I don't think we would have been able to bring anymore children into that situation, especially considering how often our resources were strained."

"And I couldn't imagine life without them," B'Elanna said. "I don't know if we had anymore children in Admiral Janeway's timeline, but I can't help but feel she was an only child."

"At least you had one. I know for a fact I had none," Kathryn said. "You know, what with my husband being married off to a Borg drone and all."

"She is _never_ going to let me live that down. Every time she wants me to do something and I don't want to do it, she just says, 'I bet you would do it if Seven were your wife', and then I feel guilty."

The adults laughed. "You know, Tom was married to another woman in another timeline," B'Elanna said, which made Miral's eyebrows climb up to her forehead ridges. "Maybe I should start using that guilt trip."

"Thanks, Chakotay," Tom said sarcastically.

"Do you ever think about how many lives we may have lived that we don't know about?" Deanna asked. "I know the Enterprise has had experiences with alternate timelines and parallel dimensions, and it really makes you think about the choices you make and where they take you."

"Well, it's like the Mirror Universe," Pop-Pop said. "Their history was identical to ours up until a certain point, and no one can figure out why it diverged. Someone made a choice, just one little choice, and that changed everything."

"I can't help but think sometimes about the choices the admiral must have made," Kathryn said softly. "She was so bitter…everything I was ever afraid of becoming."

"She had sixteen more years out there than you did," B'Elanna said softly. "We don't know everything they went through."

"Well, I'm just glad we were able to raise the kids here," Chakotay said. "When I think about them playing in the waves the way we did this week or the camping trips we take or just them being able to run in the sunshine, I get sick that it almost didn't happen."

"You and me both," his wife said.

Miral jumped as she felt a tap on her back. She turned to see Taya staring at her quizzically. "What are you doing?" her friend, only a year younger than her, whispered softly.

Miral shook her head and led her back out to the yard, where the other kids were still playing in the twilight. "Just listening to Voyager talk," she said.

Taya rolled her eyes. "Please, I hear more Voyager talk than I care to."

"Well, then be glad Uncle Harry isn't here, because him and Dad go on and on and on about Captain Proton and alien space babes and all kinds of nonsense."

Taya shook her head in disgust. "I don't know how Libby and your mother stand it. My father _knows_ better."

Now, ten years later, Miral smiled, remembering that trip and all the good times they'd had. She had been sixteen, and she had already had such an amazing life. She didn't imagine that life on Voyager could have been any better.

And now, at twenty-six, already a lieutenant on the flagship of the fleet, with her brother about the marry the youngest Janeway girl and her sister already married and having a baby with one of the Kim boys, with her parents happily retired in Malibu and Naomi Wildman, the first Voyager baby, being one of the youngest captains to command the Enterprise, with her Uncle Harry still captaining Voyager and with Aunt Kathryn and Uncle Chakotay running all over the quadrant feeding their passion for archaeology and exploration, with Tuvok, his neurological disease long a thing of the past, living contentedly on Vulcan with his wife, with Seven happily ensconced as she had been for so many years in a think tank with her companion the Doctor, and with most of the former Voyager family happy and successful, Miral couldn't help but be blissfully happy as well. She had had a good life, a wonderful life, and there was nothing she would change. She hadn't been raised on Voyager the way her parents thought she would be, but that didn't bother her. She couldn't imagine not having her grandparents, her aunts and uncles and cousins, her Grandpa John and his wife Rebecca, and a whole big family not just of blood relatives, but of the people her parents had lived and loved for seven years thousands and thousands of light years away from their home. They were a huge extended family, and while those seven years had been difficult for everyone – even costing some their families and lives – she knew that there were very few who regretted it. She knew her parents never had, because it had brought them together, and made them both more than they ever imagined they could be.

Sometimes she wondered what her life would have been like on Voyager. Would she still love science as much? Would she still have joined Starfleet? She knew she wouldn't have a best friend in Taya, because Taya wouldn't have existed, and she knew that she likely wouldn't have a little sister or two little brothers. Would she still be such a homebody? She was terribly homesick when she was away, which was funny since she had chosen a profession where she spent an awful lot of time away. But it had been worth it to be placed on such a powerful ship, even though she spoke to her parents everyday when she was gone and dreamed every night of California.

As her shuttle set down in the shipyard, Miral mentally reviewed her checklist. She needed to help her mother finalize the rehearsal dinner for her brother's wedding, she needed to listen to yet another diatribe by her youngest brother about how their other brother Jason – at twenty-four and his fiancée, Shannon, being only twenty-one – was far too young to get married and what on Earth was he thinking and how could be throw away his life like that, and she also needed to have her apartment aired out and cleaned. Her mother made a point to check it every week or so, but still, it had been unlived in for six months. First, before all that, she had to be debriefed at HQ.

But more than anything else, she had to take a dip in the ocean. It reminded her of her childhood, her happy childhood on Earth. It was there that she felt most free.

She had missed that.

_The End_


End file.
